Gov. Maura Healey’s “cruel” emergency shelter restrictions will force families to choose between sleeping in unsafe environments and making themselves ineligible for future shelter, advocates said outside the State House on Monday.

“The Healey-Driscoll administration’s decision to shorten our emergency shelter stay to five days is cruel and it’s short-sighted. It is placing the burden on desperate, hardworking families and turning them into scapegoats for the state’s inability to create safe and stable housing that’s affordable for regular people,” family medicine doctor Anita Mathews said at a rally on Monday.

The new rules — the latest development in the effort by Healey to manage the tide of homeless families seeking state-funded shelter — sets up a five-day cap on how long people can stay in overflow sites. Families who choose to use one of those temporary shelter locations after Aug. 1 will then also need to wait at least six months to qualify for placement in a more long-term emergency assistance shelter.

Additionally, the new regulations prioritize families who have been in the state longer over newly arrived migrants fleeing political and economic crises in other countries, by placing families higher up on the list to qualify for shelter if they are homeless because of a no-fault eviction, have at least one member who is a veteran, or are homeless “because of sudden or unusual circumstances in Massachusetts beyond their control, such as a flood or fire,” the governor’s office said.

Healey’s tightening grip on the system has led to parents sleeping on the street or in cars with young children, emergency rooms inundated with families looking for a place to spend the night, and even some mothers trading sex for a place for them and their children to stay, advocates said on Monday.

Asked by reporters about the rally during an unrelated press conference, Healey said there wouldn’t be any changes to the policy.

“Let me say, this budget that I just signed includes $326 million for emergency shelter. That is important. It’s important that people who are unhoused or who come on hard times, either because of an eviction or because of job loss or because of a medical issue, that we’re able to support them. Victims of domestic violence, our veteran community, children, we are going to continue to do that, and that’s funded through the budget,” she said.

Healey defended the new restrictions, saying that the shelter system doesn’t have “unlimited capacity.”